Glenn Greenwald is a national treasure

July 20, 2010

Glenn Greenwald is one of the best commentators on the web today. I find every one of his posts to be informative, pertinent, and highly perceptive. Take a look at today’s post which summarizes the sad state of our country (and the rest of the world for that matter). It covers a vast area of topics which are actually highly related – from state secrecy to corporate and elite ownership of our society to wondering why we’re so docile, and much more. Here are a few excerpts:

So it isn’t that we keep sacrificing our privacy to an always-growing National Security State in exchange for greater security. The opposite is true: we keep sacrificing our privacy to the always-growing National Security State in exchange for less security….

This world is so vast, secretive and well-funded that it’s very difficult to imagine how it could ever be brought under control. That’s particularly true given its inextricable intertwining with the private sector: the billions upon billions of dollars funneled from the Government to its private-sector “partners,”…

…it is difficult to imagine — short of some severe citizen unrest — how any of this will be brought under control. One of the few scenarios one can envision for such unrest involves growing wealth disparities and increasingly conspicuous elite corruption. In The New York Times today, investment banker and former Clinton Treasury official Roger Altman announced that the alleged “tension between President Obama and the business community” can be solved only if the political class is willing to “fix Social Security” — i.e., to slash Americans’ retirement security. Sooner or later (probably sooner), one way or another (probably this way), that’s going to happen. It’s inevitable.

Meanwhile, the Real U.S. Government — the network of secret public and private organizations which comprise the National Security and Surveillance State — expands and surveills and pilfers and destroys without much attention and with virtually no real oversight or accountability. It sucks up the vast bulk of national resources and re-directs the rest to those who own and control it.